


The Name

by maxamori



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Child's Perspective, Implied Underage, M/M, Underage - Freeform, an injured child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 12:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8533282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxamori/pseuds/maxamori
Summary: Somewhere deep in the reptilian kingdom of his brain, Eggsy knew he was in trouble.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [x57](https://archiveofourown.org/users/x57/gifts).



"Harry..." Saying his name brought him closer. Eggsy could feel a familiar profusion of warmth inside his chest, associated mainly with those special nights when Harry would slip into his bedroom and tuck him into bed. In his delirium, Eggsy could almost feel the pressure of Harry's fingertips at his waist, tenderly sliding the blankets under his bare skin. Such was the power of Harry's name, that merely speaking it could summon the love. "Harry..."

Eggsy wanted to feel the customary kiss on his forehead, but it never came. The brief glow of his own emotions faded like a spent match, and the warmth in his chest gave way to a cold, unsettling clamminess. With some effort, he managed to glance down his nose, but saw only a blurry impression of red. Lifting his head was too much effort, really. Breathing, too, seemed a heavy task, as if some creature were sitting on his rib-cage. He could feel it settling in. Weighing him down further and further as the silent moments dragged on.

Somewhere deep in the reptilian kingdom of his brain, Eggsy knew he was in trouble. The sort of trouble worse than what any grown-up might think of him. Worse than any discipline.

Eggsy felt a distant pang of a sorrow too complex for his child mind to understand. All he wanted in that moment was to tell Harry he was sorry, and he didn't even know why.

He'd been in trouble with Harry before, of course. Harry was not the sort to make a fuss over a broken window or a sidestepped curfew. But he could crush Eggsy's whole world with a single word or a look whenever Eggsy disappointed him.

"Why?" he'd asked one night, shaking the stolen notes with an imploring grip. "I would have given you anything if you'd just asked me."

Eggsy remembered the scene in fractures. Remembered the sight of the offending notes in Harry's hand. The sound of Harry's voice, almost broken, so unnervingly different from its usual silk. Eggsy was scared that he seemed able to have this effect on someone so powerful--someone so wholly associated with stalwart stability in Eggsy's mind. Bullets, bullies, and broken bones couldn't crack Harry's voice, but Eggsy's sins could. _Eggsy_  could.

_I_...

Eggsy's lips had started to form the words. _I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Harry_. But something nameless paralyzed him, and he was left naked under the shriveling gaze of Harry's disappointment. Harry waited for him. A long time. Gave him too much credit, and burdened Eggsy with the debt of his faith. When Harry finally gave up, his sigh was so weighted that Eggsy thought he would never be loved again.

"Go to bed, Eggsy."

Despite everything, Harry had tucked him in that night. Harry had tucked him in that night without a word. And although Eggsy wetted the pillow with the stains of his guilt, he fell asleep knowing there was nothing he could ever do that would make Harry love him less. Harry had told him a thousand times, but that night was special in Eggsy's memory because it was the first time he really believed it.

Had he been sleeping, just now? Eggsy's cheeks felt wet and he couldn't remember when that happened. The gravel beneath him had made his back numb, and Eggsy curled his tiny fingers against the rocks to make sure the ground was still there. The sound of the clinking pebbles sounded dull and far away. Reminded Eggsy of the sound of marbles, clinking in the sand.

All at once, Eggsy remembered that he had once had marbles. He was staring into a cat-eye, letting the light from the bedroom window filter through the orb. Up close, the pupil looked like a ribbon of red silk, flowing through the glass, suspended. There was an entire world inside each marble, and he picked them up, one after the other, and familiarized himself. There was a world made only of glittering blue satellites, suspended in a fractured void. A world with twining strokes of sunset, shimmering gold when it caught the dancing light. A world that reminded Eggsy of Mars, red and desolate and cratered with tiny bubbles in the glass. The last of these he slipped into his pocket; some childish instinct in the face of treasure.

His mother smiled at him as he made his way to the front door, his fresh pouch of marbles clutched tight in a sweaty grip.

"Going out to play?" she asked, and Eggsy knew that this was an important moment for her as well. It had meant so much to her to be able to present those marbles to Eggsy. A popular toy, one all the other children was playing with as well. Eggsy didn't know what she had sacrificed, but on whatever level, he understood the implications. He detoured from the door and gave his mother a kiss on the cheek before darting out with his feet only halfway in his shoes.

It wasn't hard to find other players. A group of neighborhood kids were sitting just around the corner, crouched over little pools of marbles between their legs. Eggsy's single pouch suddenly felt inadequate, but he squared his shoulder and walked right up to where the other children were sitting, determined to play his first game.

"Hi," he said. Perhaps not as firmly as he'd tried to.

The other children looked up lazily and gave Eggsy a skeptical once-over. On every other occasion, they had dismissed him, excluded him... but this time, he had something they wanted. He could feel it, in the way their eyes lingered on the pouch and their fingers traced over the pools of worlds in their laps.

"Fine," someone said. "You can play."

Eggsy plopped down and poured his modest treasure between his own crossed legs, glancing around at the ongoing games for clues.

"So how do I play?" he asked.

"Ugh." One of the other children impatiently reached into Eggsy's stash and stacked four marbles into a sort of tower in front of Eggsy's feet. They did the same on their own end, and produced a special kind of marble Eggsy had never seen before--opaque, with brightly colored pocks along the shell. "Now I shoot and see if I win any of your marbles," the other boy explained, and flicked the opaque marble at Eggsy's tower before he could ask any questions.

It crumbled.

"There," the boy said. "I win those." With that, he unceremoniously snatched Eggsy's fallen marbles into his tiny fist and deposited them into his own treasure trove with a harsh clack.

"Do... do I shoot yours now?" Eggsy asked, reeling from the sudden loss.

"Don't be stupid. I get to build a fort now. Because I won."

"Oh... okay?"

Eggsy watched as the boy patted the sand into a little hill between them, blocking the path to his tower.

"Now you get to shoot."

Eggsy looked around uncertainly, and found that one of the girls was glaring at him. "Those are the rules," she warned, tugging on the frilly trim of her bright yellow stockings.

"Oh... okay..."

Eggsy was still confused when the last of his marbles were piled in the boy's lap, and he found himself pawing at nothing but sand in his own. "But I still don't understand how to play..." he pleaded, reaching out to claim a marble from the board.

"Thief!" the boy yelped at once, snatching the marbles out of Eggsy's reach. "Are you trying to _steal_  my marbles? I won, fair and square. Now get lost."

Eggsy startled so much in the face of that word that he shuffled back home as fast as he could with the echoes of it still inside him. Thief! Thief! In a strange way, that false accusation broke the first membrane, and made it easier later on.

When he stepped back into the apartment, his mother looked up in surprise.

"Back already?"

Eggsy stood in silent shame, forlorn and empty-handed. He didn't need to look at his mother to feel her spirits sinking, her heart breaking for him.

"Oh Eggsy... What happened?"

Eggsy didn't answer. He slinked into his room.

Two weeks later, Eggsy was looking at his old neighborhood in the side mirror of a moving-truck. On their first day in the estates, the Martian marble in Eggsy's trouser pocket broke the last working washer in the laundry room and got his mother slapped with a hundred pound fee.

"'Arry..."

Eggsy's voice was weak, and he felt a cold fear when he heard himself speak. He was croaking, wheezing, trying to form the magic name. If he couldn't call out, how would Harry ever find him? How would Harry even know to rescue him?

Harry had rescued Eggsy in so many ways before. Some of them were literal, while others only made a private sort of sense. Harry had taken Eggsy to the toy store once, some weeks before their first Christmas together, and let Eggsy pick out his own presents. Eggsy had wandered the aisles of talking, glowing, dancing toys, each one promising to make him tougher, or to be his friend, or to take him on adventure. Some of them simply promised nonsense. _Rrriggamarole! Drrrive it right! BAM!_

Harry was a shadow behind him that day, trailing dutifully with a basket in his hand and a wallet in his pocket. "Do you like that one?" Harry would ask, whenever Eggsy paused in front of some flashing display. Eggsy didn't really know whether he liked any of the items or not. It was too loud to really feel anything.

"Yeah..." he answered faintly, each time, and Harry quietly filled the basket.

By the time they got to the check-out counter, the basket was overflowing, and Eggsy watched item after item disappear onto the counter above. Before Harry was halfway through the order, something invisible inside Eggsy broke and he burst into tears. Loud, messy, and embarrassing tears.

He found himself lifted into Harry's arms before he could even apologize. Rushed wordlessly away from the crowds and the noise and the veritable mountain of Christmas presents, out into the fresh winter air.

"It's okay..." Harry whispered against his ear, and kissed his tear-stained cheek. Hoisting Eggsy just a little to secure his grip. "It's okay."

"I'm... I..." But Harry had already told him it was okay, and Eggsy had nothing to apologize for.

"Do you want to go?" Harry asked. "Or do you want to go back in?"

"I don't... I don't really want all those toys." Eggsy sniffled, and tucked his runny nose against Harry's scarf. He felt the hum of Harry's chuckle.

"I know... Tell you what. Let's just pick one thing. Something we can play together. Would you like that?"

Eggsy nodded vigorously against Harry's scarf.

Later that night, they sat cross-legged on the lush Turkish carpet on Harry's den floor, dividing up a pouch of marbles between them.

"So," asked Harry, with a smile. "How do I play?"

Eggsy startled awake. He gasped to get life back into his body. He'd fallen into blackness, and he hadn't felt it happen. He couldn't tell whether he'd been trapped in that nothingness for seconds or hours, but his entire body felt cold in a way it hadn't before. Cold, as if it were part of the gravel. Everything from the neck down was numb now. Eggsy tried to move his mouth and found that even his face was stiff. It tingled like prickling needles when he tried to make the name.

"H..."

Eggsy had felt sad before. Now he felt only an empty sense of waiting. He couldn't say Harry's name. He couldn't make Harry come. He was alone--completely alone. And Harry was going to be so disappointed with him for leaving. It felt appropriate, somehow, that Harry couldn't prove the world a good place this time around. That there was, after all, something beyond the reach of the warmth and the safety that Harry made him feel. It was time for bed, and Harry wasn't coming to tuck him in.

"Eggsy..."

Eggsy heard his own name, and thought for a moment that he was dreaming. The sound had seemed to come from the darkening sky, and for a moment, Eggsy floated toward the clouds... before his head lulled against the warm crook of Harry's arm.

"It's okay," Harry whispered. "I found you. I'm here. It's okay..."

Eggsy's fingers curled against the fabric of Harry's jacket to make sure that he was really there. Somewhere through the numbness and the cold, he felt resistance in his grip.

_I'm sorry_ , he thought, because he couldn't say it. But Harry must have heard it anyhow, because a moment later, Eggsy felt the searing heat of Harry's kiss against his bloodless lips, and he knew, all over again, that nothing could make Harry stop loving him.


End file.
